Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Reflection on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

Jesus kept walking no matter what was happening around him whether John was arrested or Lazarus needed him; he walked to the wedding in Cana though he may not have known what he would be asked to do. He set his face and feet towards Jerusalem even when he knew that was the way to trouble with a capital T. Paul kept moving too, knowing that his mission was to proclaim the gospel, so when Corinthians began to mess things up he wrote to them while on the road. Isaiah knows God sends joy to those once bereft of hope.

God is always on the move, and not just walking, but touching and blessing and inspiring and jostling status quos with new life. Pharaohs. presidents, generals, moguls, dictators, pass through on their way to self-described greatness, but they are not really moving so much as walking on the treadmill called success and power and wealth, while God and faithful ones God touches really move, living where things count less than soul, where hearts are eager and minds open to receive and share, not grab, the gifts freely available to all. These are ones Jesus calls, the ones who answer, putting down nets in which they have loaded all they own, to be captured, raised up and sent forth by a power greater than themselves, greater than all of us, all the world.

It seems easiest to move with the world, not trusting in God or prophets or others who ask us to move in holy, other ways, not out of the world but deeper in it because we move knowing the truth of the psalmist and Jesus and Paul, and Mohammed and Moses, too, God is my guide and my salvation, whom shall I fear? God is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

Can we not be brave like the smallest seed that pushes up from the soil into a world it does not know, trusting in the rain, sunshine, and nurture God provides and encourages us to offer, too? Can we not become, like Simon and Andrew, and James and John, mighty oaks of faith, the winds of God blowing in and through us, gracing all around us , our roots going every deeper into earthy soul, shedding leaves of faith, joy, hope, and love wherever we stand, the never-ending melodies of God, the ceaseless plea to care for the widow, orphan, immigrant, divine prayer for us to love as God loves, crossing our lips not just on Sunday mornings but in every moment of every day?

About this poem . . . God so often gets locked up somewhere—a book, a temple, an idea—for safe keeping. But the prophets and even the psalmists, in their better moments, knew better, and surely Jesus did, and he helped Paul figure it out, too. One of the problems with churches may be that we are locked up in one place, too, and forget that God is on the move, everywhere, all the time. Of course, God comes to us all the time, but we can easily miss the visit because we do not expect it right where are.